Gates donation without foundation

PR pipers at the Gates of Dawn

How strange that the PR of the Gates' foundations, Trevor Neilson, should now claim that the Gates pere et mere have "no imminent plans to give away the entirety of their wealth". In fact the Sunday Times did not suggest this. It said that some new programmes would be announced within the next three months. It also noted that the plan was to make the donation to the foundations "within their lifetimes". But what's happened behind the scenes to create this panic reaction? Most likely, Bill Gates Sr has been told off for speaking to the Sunday Times without going through Neilson. The new press release, which adds nothing at all, is a way of keeping the story warm for the reasons we suggested yesterday. It's just special pleading for Judge Jackson to treat Microsoft less harshly. Yesterday, Neilson denied the link between Gates' intention to donate most of his wealth to charity and what was called the "monopoly case" in the Sunday Times report. He said "the couple has expressed a desire to return the majority of their wealth back to society". That's one way of putting it. There are however millions of unhealthy users in society who have multiple copies of Windows and who would rather like a refund for the copies they no longer have in use on older hardware. Microsoft effectively prevented them from buying new PCs without Windows preloaded, and then transferring Windows from a PC that was being retired. ®